Yale University Press, Jan 1, 1988 - Social Science - 236 pages. "A fascinating and pain-staking (sorry!) From the tale of a sixteenth-centu…. For those, like me, who are much more into the folkloric aspects of vampire lore, there is a great deal as well - Barber includes solid translations of a number of important primary sources throughout the work, and the accounts are still very gripping. With Andrew Prine, Mark Damon, Patty Shepard, Teresa Gimpera. There are accounts of vampirism and stories told by people, European mostly, about situations in which the dead affected the living. There are lots of books that try to explain the phenomenon and after expending some time searching and reading reviews, I ended up buying this one. This book shows the reader that bodies rot and decay in a variety of different ways, and unless you understand the science of decomposition it is tempting to resort to supernatural explanations for bodies that fail to decompose in the usual or expected way. And I gotta tell you, it was worth it. I own quite a few books regarding historical vampires, way more than I care to admit, and all of them I have read at least once. Vampires, Burial and Death – Folklore and Reality, With a New Introduction Paperback – Import, 4 May 2010 by Paul Barber (Author) › Visit Amazon's Paul Barber Page. It's the kind of book to read slowly, ideal for those moments when you don't want to do anything else and want to relax a bit. Kindred is a novel by Octavia Butler. Incredibly well researched, Well, I bought this book without really knowing what I was doing. Refresh and try again. Anyway, this book is worth reading and contains many valuable insights and interesting facts about a (somewhat) taboo subject. Then moving onto the subject of burial, how people are buried, why, where, so on. by Yale University Press, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. "Barber’s inquiry into vampires, fact and fiction, is a gem in the literature of debunking. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. We’d love your help. Ah, this perfectly reasonable and quite interesting scholarly look at vampiric folklore and possible explanations for the persistance of vampire lore from an actual scholar was the perfect antidote to the Montague Summer's (decadent Catholic-wannabe dandy who tries to convince us with his two books about vampires to be ever vigilant against Satan) book on vampires that I read just before this. This is then followed by extrapolation, which is the main part of each chapter, and of course what's most convincing about each section. . A rotting human corpse is the cornerstone of a complex ecosystem, a better understanding of which could have direct applications in forensic science him somehow if they could, and they met at the cemetery. The disturbance of the grave is merely one means whereby the body makes itself noticed” (125). Welcome back. "[A] meticulously researched book. This is definitely on my top five favorite list. Many people consider this book a masterpiece of the genre (non-fictional vampires) and I would like to know your opinion about it, if it's possible. . If you're squeamish, you may want to skip it. VAMPIRES, BURIAL, AND DEATH: Folklore and Reality. Like in the Plogojowitz story, there was a 24 hour illness before the death and the people who died all complained of Plogojowitz choking them in a dream. Belief in the vampire, an animated corpse that remains in its grave by day and emerges to prey on the living at night, has sometimes been attributed to premature burial. And not a corpse in any too good shape, either! Barber’s book is a convincing exercise in mental archaeology. XIX Keeping Body and Soul Apart 189. by Paul Barber‧RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 1988. If you are a fan of sexy vampires, you should skip this book. There is SOOOOO much information in this book that I have yet to read anywhere else. Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. But there is an element of seduction in it that makes the children willingly go with her: later, in Chapter XV, one of her victims wakes in the hospital and ask immediately if he can go "play with the bloofer lady.'" Summary Chapter 14 The vampires in the folk tales kill in different ways. 147-53; Schmitt, Revenants, also discusses water as a boundary between the living and the dead, throughout. In Vampires, Burial, and Death, Barber differentiates between vampires of folklore and those of popular fiction (with a very strong emphasis on those of folklore). Hardco. . "—Kenneth McLeish. In Vampires, Burials and Death, folklorist Paul Barber dissects the logic behind vampire myths, which he believes originally arose from unschooled but astute observations of …